


Meltwater

by Operamatic



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Operamatic/pseuds/Operamatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian Wayne has every reason to hate Stephanie Brown.  But when a chase goes awry he may have to warm up to her for his own good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meltwater

They’re swinging tonight.  Well, he’s swinging, to be precise.  She’s doing something that resembles a cat being flung through the air, arms splayed out, torso twisted in such a way that she appears to be facing in two directions at once.

Damian scoffs at this.  Sloppy.  Inefficient.  Obnoxious.  He hates her.  He hates her so much, because she’s sticking her pointy ears where they don’t belong tonight.  Correction, every night.  She’s a distraction and a liability and a _female_ , which means she’s doubly unwelcome.

He is taking this moment of freefall to imagine her losing grip on her grappling gun, zipping through the air and smashing into the side of a building.  He adds a cartoon _splat_ in his mind for humor.  Damian enjoys the type of cartoons that involve gratuitous violence, which is why Grayson won’t let him watch Tom  & Jerry anymore.  _It gives you too many bad ideas_. 

Were she ever to snuff herself out of the picture, Damian can only imagine himself relieved.  No longer would he have to deal with her snide remarks, her disregard for her superiors (namely him), and no longer would he have to look at that stupid face with its stupid pouty mouth and those vapid blue eyes and that ridiculous hair that she just let fly around like a big, stupid, yellow “hit me” sign.

“Keep up short stuff!” she calls as she whizzes past him, over cars, under streetlights before diving over the edge of the Gotham City Bridge.

                        He repeats it to himself.  He hates her so much.

 

 

 

Damian follows, noticing for the first time the ice on the water below them.  He sees their target now, fleeing uselessly across the ice, leaping away from the cracks that appear below his heavy feet.

“All that cash must be weighing down on him,” he says.

“Naw, it must be the weight of his crimes!”  She calls back gleefully, looping through the support beams towards the base of the bridge.  She takes a moment to perform a useless upside down split, winking back at him, before letting herself drop safely onto the ice.

Damian lets a hiss come through his teeth.  That’s another thing he can’t stand; her awful jokes.  Not that he’s any better at them, but at least he can blame it on lack of a childhood creative outlet.  He chalks hers up to incompetence.

It isn’t until they’re halfway across the bay, gaining on the hapless crook, that Damian realizes how the thin the ice is.  It’s a miracle she hasn’t fallen through, given her massive body fat index.

“It’s a miracle you haven’t fallen through, given your-”

He doesn’t hear much after that, because he’s underwater. 

Sinking, like his feet are stones while his body is nothing but ribbons trailing behind them.

He’s never felt so cold.  Pricked by tiny shards of something…like wires running through his skin.  Yes, like the time mother replaced his spine.  The acupuncture afterwards was like this, but there was smoke and incense and hot tea and this is just ice ice ice.

He can’t see, his cape is winding itself around his head.  He reaches for an air pod in his belt.  His fingers have gone numb inside his gloves.  He wasn’t even this cold when the dumb blonde froze him.

His chest contracts, his lungs are burning.

            _Damn_

 

 

 

The next thing he feels is something slippery and soft.  It’s not plush, because there’s firmness underneath it, almost like muscle.  He is warmer now too, but not by much, and he realizes after a moment of listening that he is in fact shivering, though the sensation has yet to reach his numb hands and feet.

“W-wha-”

“Shhhhh,” a voice cuts through the thrum of blood and enters his ears.  Breath follows immediately after, hot and foreign on his prickling skin.

“Th-th-the f-f-f-uck?!” he croaks out, rolling his eyes uselessly beneath the domino mask.

The damn wench is wrapped around him like a vice.  Her cape is tucked around them and her hair hangs limply about her face, which is still dripping from the looks of it.

“Geddoff,” he huffs out, pushing weakly against her, his arms heavy suddenly like weights.  He feels suffocated, “Get off, we’re wasting time.”

“Oh yes,” she quips, “You could be dying of hypothermia even faster.”

“Sh-shut up you…fat…ugly…” he feels himself grow dizzy as he gasps for breath between insults.

“Ooh, I’m shaking in my custom-made, totally insulated bat suit.” she repositions themselves so his head is cradled in the crook of her neck and wraps her arms tight around his own to keep him from struggling.

“Why are you wet-t-t?”  He gives up on retorting for now, at least until he can feel his fingers again.  After that he might strangle her.

“Isn’t that obvious?  You were _kinda_ drowning, and there’s this thing you do when ten year old boy wonders are drowning, you _kinda_ rescue them and make sure they. Don’t. Die.” She cracks her neck and it reverberates through his skull, “its also _kinda_ part of the whole saving the day thing.”

“I d-don’t-t want your h-help,” he sneers and gives wiggling his toes a try.  It feels like they’re breaking in half, and he yowls, “I d-don’t-t NEED it-t-t.”

She stays quiet for a moment, as if unsure what to say next, then mutters back reluctantly, “Well I’d believe that more if you didn’t run around with weights sewn into your freaking uniform…seriously, those boots are what, ten pounds?  Are you _asking_ to be drowned?”

“S-ssss’conditioning…m-m-makes-sss me s-s-strong-g-gerrr.” He feels himself fading again.  Adrenaline wearing off, exhaustion taking over.  Stay awake awake _awake_.

“You’re plenty strong you silly kid.” She rests her head on top of his, and he feels his breath ease as her own ghosts across his face.

He tries not to think about how warm she feels now.  He doesn’t know how to deal with all the extra limbs that are draped around him, boxing him in.

He’s never been held like this.

His own mother has never held him like this.

He observes the swell of her chest against his shoulder, and wonders briefly what it would feel like to place his head there.

He quashes it instantly.

He opens his mouth to speak, but all the he hears is the echoes of his chattering teeth bouncing off the steel supports of the bridge above them.

Once again, his eyes flit to her chest, which is moving rhythmically, willing his breath to match hers.  He doesn’t realize right away that his eyes are closing, but he’s tired enough to let it happen.  He wonders in his hindbrain if this is what comfort is to other ten year old boys.

He tells himself he isn’t jealous and believes it.

And he tells himself he isn’t disappointed at all when police sirens begin to grow louder and shouts are heard above them.

“We should go,” she says softly and releases him from her grasp, “You need me to carry you?”

He attempts to tut at her in his usual manner, but it comes out more like Tt-t-t-t.

He shrugs away her arms and massages some life back into his shoulders, ignoring the dull pain in his legs as he stands.  He tosses a haughty smirk back at her for good measure and adds, “You sure you’re not looking for an excuse to molest a minor?”

He gets a sneer for that, “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

As they position themselves to swing off in different directions, she to her mentor, and he to his, she shoots him a smile, “Still wanna stab me?”

“Psh, of course.”

He grumbles and launches himself into the air with a click of his grappling gun.  He doesn’t turn to watch her go, nor does he allow himself a moment to reflect on her cavalier smile or the warmth of her arms or the gleam of her stupid hair, but he does manage to concede silently:

            _Well, maybe not lethally_.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago when I saw someone mentioning how much they wanted a fic about Stephanie and Damian shenanigans.


End file.
